1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a 10-gigabit Ethernet line interface apparatus and method of controlling the same, which can maintain compatibility with other gigabit Ethernet technologies and improve the transmission and packet processing speed of a physical layer to a 10-gigabit per second level by maintaining basic frame standards, such as the sizes of minimum and maximum frames and inter frame gap.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A conventional gigabit Ethernet switch apparatus has been operated as a layer 2 Ethernet switch apparatus that allows a backbone system for interfacing all Ethernet ports at a speed of 1-gigabit per second (Gbps) and an edge system for interfacing ports between backbone systems at a speed of 1 Gbps and interfacing ports between a plurality of servers or hubs at a speed of 100-megabit per second (Mbps) to be constructed into a Local Area Network (LAN).
However, as the number of users utilizing various applications increases, the amount of traffic on the Internet and Intranet increases, so a gigabit-level desktop or server computer has been introduced. Further, data traffic on an internal network of a campus or local network between buildings increases, so a 10-gigabit Ethernet edge switch apparatus is required to interface ports between plural servers or hubs at a speed of 1 Gbps and interface ports between backbone systems at a speed of 10 Gbps.
However, a conventional 1-gigabit Ethernet switch apparatus cannot provide a speed of 10 Gbps.
Further, some communication equipment companies invest a lot of money to independently develop packet processors capable of processing 10-gigabit Ethernet packets in the form of an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), and market the packet processors. The packet processors developed in such a way are problematic in that, since they are dependent upon products manufactured by the companies which developed the packet processors, they do not have generality, and system costs increase due to the burden of development costs.
As a result, methods and apparatuses for improving 10-gigabit Ethernet technologies complying with Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.3ae standards have recently been proposed. One of them is disclosed in European Patent EP 1 124,355 A2, applied by Nortel Networks Corp., and registered in August 2001. In this patent, there is disclosed a method of providing a mapping function for a common interface between Local Area Network (LAN) and Wide Area Network (WAN) so as to transmit high-speed Ethernet data streams with a data speed of 10 Gbps through a synchronous packet switch network, such as standard SONET OC-192 with a line speed of 9.953280 Gbaud, in MAC and physical layer functions. However, the patent provides only a mapping function between physical layers of the LAN and WAN, but cannot provide layer 2 (L2) switching and layer 3 (L3) routing functions between a plurality of 1-gigabit ports and a single 10-gigabit port.